grommet setting tool
rubber mallet
leather punch
cord for lacing
We'll start with the armbands. And lead directly into the shoulders, really, the technique was the same for all these pieces. First of all, some patterns!
IMPORTANT NOTE: After I was done with these, I wish I had done them a different way, which I will cover after I've told you what I did so you can see why I wish I'd done it differently. This method still gives a good result, but I believe there's a better way now that I understand things a little better.
So, I resized all of these based on my measurements. I wanted the shoulder pieces to be about 8" from longest point to longest point, and to extend about 4" wide. My upper armbands needed to be about 12" around and about 3" wide. For the lower armbands they needed to be 10" around at the upper forearm and 6" around at the wrist.
The shoulder and upper armband were easy to resize, mostly I just focused on the length and the width ended up close enough to what I wanted. I sized the images just a little smaller than my measurements since these patterns would be cut out of Worbla and glued to pleather bases that I would want to be the actual measurements of my arms.
The lower armband was a problem. If you check out the source for these patterns, you might notice the lower armbands are extremely rectangular shaped. And based on the way the designs wrap around Xena's arms, and the length that they need to be to fit properly, I'm forced to assume that Lucy Lawless has some thick ass wrists. Or thin upper arms. But based on the sword play I tend think it's probably the former. Anyways, there is a much bigger difference in the circumference of my wrists and forearms than there appears to be for the original armband pattern. So I uploaded the image to pixlr.com, my favorite basic photoshop knockoff, used the distort tool and just brought those bottom corners in a bit until it would fit the way I wanted on my armbands with my measurements. If you have good thick sword fighting wrists, feel free to use the original pattern linked in the caption of that image.
So, initally I traced these onto the 10mm EVA foam and cut out the main shape only to realize that the amount of time and effort I'd spend sanding and carving and cutting the foam to get it to look right was going to be maddening and probably be too thick in the end. So I scrapped that idea. And instead I cut them out of 2mm craft foam.
It took some time with all those details, but it wasn't too bad.
Next up, those foam pieces need to be covered in Worbla. So the method was the same as the breastplate and backplate. Cut out two of each piece you're making, heat up one piece, stick it to the back of the foam, heat up another piece and stick it to the front of the foam and then press in all the details to define them. You will really want your sculpting tools here, there's so many tiny details.
It's important to note that there is a definite top and bottom to these. The top is where you're going to spend all your time carefully pressing the Worbla around the details and it's going to look much neater and nicer, so make sure you remember to do the shoulders facing opposite directions so they'll both look good on top going the right way. Technically I suppose the upper armbands should have a left and a right as well, but the designs are so close to being reversible that no one will notice if they're not perfectly mirrored. I can tell you I've paid exactly zero attention to which armband I'm putting on which arm and which way it's facing. It really doesn't matter. And the lower armbands are exactly the same, no need to worry there.
Once you've got the Worbla pressed neatly into all the details comes the most fun part, cutting out all the extra Worbla. You remember the fun dance we did with the other armor pieces of heating the Worbla, moving it to the cutting mat, cutting a little, unsticking it from the cutting mat, cutting, unsticking, reheating and repeating? Yeah. Get ready to spend the rest of your life doing that.
The day I did this, I sat at the kitchen table to start at about 3 in the afternoon. I didn't finish until 3 in the morning. And I don't want you to think I was slacking, I only stopped for bathroom and brief food breaks. This is a hell of a chore and requires massive amounts of patience. It is, unfortunately, necessary. With this method, anyways. I have another idea on how I would do this if I started over.
You will notice here that I ignored the fact that all of the metal piece on Xena's armor have that ridged line down the middle of everything, almost like a lightly folded point. My method does not really allow for that. I suppose technically you can try to squish it into a point along all the middle of the designs, which would take a lot of time and might not work, or you could add snakes of extra Worbla and squish them into ridges like I did on the breastplate, but that would make them thicker, probably too thick, and would also take a lot of extra time and work.
So, my other idea is based on the little scrolly curlicues I did on the backplate. Basically I would lay out the pattern for the armbands, and roll out a bunch of little Worbla snakes that I would arrange in the various designs. No foam base needed. These would also be really easy to squish flatter and shape the little ridge down the middle of everything. I do have some concerns that these might be hard to squish flat enough, particularly in the borders around the designs of the armbands, so I thing it might also work to cut strips and stack them together, I think a double thickness of Worbla would be thick enough to be squished into a slight ridge down the middle to give that lightly folded look. I'd probably to do the strips for the borders and the snakes for all the curly designs. The shoulders would be all snakes. I think this would give a better three dimensional look, without being too thick, which is what adding Worbla to the flat foam cored pieces would do.
So, the main thing with this alternate method, is it will make your life a thousand times easier to arrange the patterns directly on the pleather base of the pieces. That way you don't have to worry about reheating and forming them to yourself, and worry about stretching and ruining your carefully crafted curlicues. So we're going to cover the pleather bases now.
(side note. Carefully crafted curlicues is my new favorite phrase.)
There's nothing super complicated here. Basically I used the design patterns to cut out pieces of pleather just a bit larger than the designs. Keep in mind you need to leave like an inch or so on the ends so you have space to add grommets to lace them closed. I did not pay enough attention to this, and barely had enough room on mine. Make sure you leave at least a small seam allowance as well.
You'll also want to cut the base out of black fabric for the back side that goes against your skin. Sew the tops and bottoms together, right sides together and turn it right side out. Next, you'll want a 2mm foam core just to give the armbands some body and thickness. I found it easier to use the sewn pleather pieces to trace the foam core, since it needs to fit inside the seams. Fit the foam inside the fabric.
So, if you're following my method with the flat designs, you will now want to form these pieces to your arms. (We'll cover the shoulders in a moment.)
COMMON SENSE DUMMY MOMENT: Form these to your dominant arm. I know it's easier to form them to your non-dominant arm because you want to use your dominant hand to do the work, but that's a terrible idea. Fun fact: Your dominant arm is probably slightly thicker than your non-dominant arm, since it's the one you probably use for everything. If you make the same mistake I did and form this to your non-dominant arm, it's gonna be snug and uncomfortable on your dominant arm.
Ask me how I know.
So, basically what I did was I wrapped the foam core pleather pieces around my arm and held them in place with a strip of painter's tape. No, I did not sew the edges closed at this point. I could have, but I know that when you curved this around your arm, the fabric and foam were going to shift, if I sewed it while it was flat it would probably warp weirdly when I wrapped it around my arm.
My plan was to form the Worbla pieces, remove them so I could paint them without have to worry about getting paint on the base, add the grommets to the pleather, and glue the Worbla to the pleather. So, one at a time, I taped on a pleather piece, heated the corresponding Worbla piece and carefully lined up and pressed it to the pleather, wrapping it around my arm. I made sure to let it cool in place so it would hold it's shape.
Please pay no attention to my makeup-less sleep deprived face. I'm not kidding when I say this costume was a process. And I get really intense and focused when I'm deep in a complicated project. Things like sleep and my appearance are really irrelevant.
It was at this point that I learned something important. The adhesive in Worbla absolutely, 100%, irrevocably, irretrievably fuses to the pleather I was working with. There was absolutely no way I was ever going to remove these from the pleather to finish the grommets or paint the Worbla pieces separately. The second I pressed the warm Worbla into the pleather, the game was over. That was where they lived now. Which saved me from worrying about using the right glue to make sure they stayed attached, but meant I was doomed to have to be careful about painting. And I was now unable to use any kind of spray primer or varnish on them.
It also meant adding grommets was going to be a royal pain in the ass, since those Worbla pieces were absolutely going to make it difficult to get the proper angle for hammering. And they absolutely did. I added the grommets next, which was quite a challenge, but I managed. I do feel like maybe I should have used smaller grommets, the size 0 seems a bit big. I'd probably have been better off with 00, but I was working with what I had on hand.
I used tiny narrow strips of Worbla wrapped around to seal the unsewn edges of the armbands, based on the fact that I hadn't really left enough fabric on the edges to finish the edge any other way. If you're smarter about it you can probably leave more fabric, tuck it to the inside and sew it down, which might be nicer. But I had to adapt based on my previous mistakes.
If you're following my alternate ideas for these armbands, the process of making the pleather foam core base is the same, but I would suggest tracing the pattern designs onto the pleather with a sharpie or something before shaping, while it's still flat. Then there's a pretty solid argument to be made for using a Worbla core instead of foam with this method as well. You can then form it around your arm and let it cool, and that way it will give you a rigid shape to sculpt the curlicues directly on to, which is why you will want to have traced the designs on the pleather before shaping it around your arm. That will be so much more difficult on a curve. Again, this is only a theory, but I believe it would end up looking better and more accurate.
Also- I would have bought the black Worbla if I knew what I was doing. I've read it's better for details like this. But I was too much of a Worbla noob to want to buy the more expensive Worbla before I knew what I was doing. That would have made it so I didn't have to work so hard to smooth the surface and also skipped the black base coat step for all my armor.
In the process of creating this costume, I've spent a lot of time studying screenshots while also binge-watching the show, so I have a much better grasp on how the pieces of her armor break down. For instance the round curly part on the front tip of the shoulder pieces is a separate shape from the rest of the designs. It's really hard to describe all the little bits that go into the shape of her armor pieces. I really recommend you spend a lot of time with screenshots, and if you can watch the show, you should. You get a lot more different angles and views of her costume.
So, the shoulders now. I attempted to follow the same method, but when I sewed the pleather to the lining and turned it inside out, I got this awful weird lumpy thing.
This is not the first time I have found something I did to be totally awful but for some reason pictures don't really capture it. Trust me, it was bad. The edges were ugly and lumpy and it was never going to work. So instead I cut out some Worbla pieces based on the pattern I had made for the pleather base piece, and then cut out new pleather pieces just a little bit larger than the pattern. Then all I had to do was heat the Worbla to stick them together, folding the edges of the pleather around to the underside of the piece.
See how much nicer and flatter those pieces look?
I then stuck the Worbla design pieces to the top of the pleather, heated the whole thing and shaped it over my shoulder. My shoulders are a bit lumpy, so I rounded them out around a nearby convenient spray paint can. I also added a Worbla tab with a D ring to the back tip of the shoulder and a Worbla tube shaped to the copper wire for the front squiggly wire pieces to the front tip. Once that was done I cut some black 2mm craft foam pieces a bit smaller than the pleather base pattern and glued it to the underside.
Just for neatness' sake, I also ran a line of black puffy paint around the edge of the foam just to cover any showing Worbla bits and to soften the transition from the foam to the edge. Totally not necessary, but I have this thing for making the insides and undersides of my projects neat and nice. It's just more professional.
Also, in this process while looking for reference photos you may note that Lucy Lawless ALWAYS HANGS HER HAIR IN FRONT OF HER SHOULDERS FOR PICTURES. It's infuriating. Getting screenshots of these shoulder pieces is absurdly difficult. This is where watching the show was invaluable. Even if it's not a still shot unless I pause it, it still gives me a much easier way to study the way it's supposed to look.
So at this point you should have unpainted plain Worbla designs firmly stuck to pleather bases for both sets of armbands and the shoulder pieces. The armbands should have grommets and the shoulders should have D rings and squiggly wire tubes. All that's left now is painting.
For priming I did three coats of wood glue. Just like with the other pieces I wasn't concerned about a perfectly smooth surface. After that I painted them black. I actually mixed black acrylic paint with textile medium because I figured turning it into fabric paint meant it would flex and be less likely to crack. Once that was dry I rubbed the surface with Antique Gold Rub N Buff. After that I took my airbrush to it and sprayed down the edges and seams with black paint to weather it.
After this I added a topcoat of Polycrylic semi-gloss to protect the paint. For some unexplainable reason it wasn't as glossy on the armbands as it was on the larger armor pieces? Maybe I'm crazy. But then I was able to call it done!
Until a few days later when I remembered there's supposed to be rivets all around the edges of these pieces.
Whoops.
So, of course this is where you'll use more of those flat studs, but of course you can't stab the prongs through the Worbla. So basically what I did was I took the studs, and using a pair of jewelry wire cutters I cut the prongs off the studs and just glued the heads in place. The cut prongs had sharp edges so I was able to kind of drive them into the Worbla a little to give it more grip, but mostly it was just the glue holding them on.
Once they were in place and the glue was set I took a bit of black Rub N Buff and a Q tip and smeared some faintly around the base of each rivet so it looked worn in with the rest of it, and then added another coat of Polycrylic to protect the new paint and kind of seal the rivets in place.
NOW I could call them done. I just needed to sew the straps from the backplate around the D rings in the back of the shoulder pieces, after measuring how long I needed it to hang (About 4 inches on me), and I needed some lacing for the armbands and they were good to go. Due to the Worbla being formed to my arm for the armbands the lacing was really just decorative, so I just used the cheap stuff I used for the boots. I even superglued the knot tying it shut on the upper armbands, those just slide into place, easy peasy. I need the gap where the lacing is to get the lower armbands on since I apparently have super skinny wrists, so I just have to have someone tie the lacing for me once they're on.
Wow. Turned out I had a lot more to say about those pieces than I thought.
But now, on to the kneeguards!
Man, maybe I shouldn't have lumped those in together, they're made in totally different ways. Oh well!
So, I know I already posted this image, but as a reminder, we're trying to create this:
There are many variations on how this piece goes together based on various screenshots and other cosplayers, but this is supposedly a costume actually worn by Lucy on the show. I think it's possible that it may have changed from time to time, but I chose this image to base my knee guards on. There was no pattern for this that I could find so I had to start from scratch.
So, to make a pattern I started with a rectangle of paper I covered in duct tape that was 11" high by 14" wide. Based on my reference image 11" is roughly what would cover from the top of my knee to about halfway down my shin, maybe slightly higher. And 14" would go comfortably around my BOOT not my leg with a gap in the back for adding elastic for ease of wearing. There was no way I wanted buckles or lacing going across the back of my knee, so elastic was the way to go. But we're nowhere near that part.
So. Rectangle.
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| (Artist's sketch) |
Then, I marked the vertical and horizontal centers.
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| (We use the term artist loosely) |
Then I marked off an inch wide strip across the center horizontal line.
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| (Artist's rendition of "an inch") |
I then rounded off the top corners, gradually trimming off roughly an inch with a gradual curve. On the bottom half I found the center and then cut a straight line from the middle of the bottom half to the center vertical line on each side to bring it to a point.
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| (Look, man, I never claimed to have the steadiest hand. Especially when drawing with a mouse.) |
On a separate piece of duct tape covered paper, I drew out a circle of approximately the right size- fun fact, the O rings that come with the Todd's Costumes hardware kit are EXACTLY the right size, so I just traced one of those- and roughly sketched some claw shapes to arrange around the circles. The claws for the top half will need rounded back ends to curve around the circle in the center, but the bottom will just have blunt back ends. I then cut them out and took my time arranging and tweaking the shapes until they looked right, and then traced them onto the pattern for later reference.
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| (Man, I regret using the word Artist to refer to myself and I apologize that you have to look at that.) |
You get the idea. My clumsy sketches are nothing like a pattern, please don't take them as gospel, just use them as a vague idea on how to create this yourself. Also, if I were to redo this, I would cut some curves into the sides:
Roughly where the blue spots are, because when I actually wore these, the bending of my knees caused the fabric in those spots to fold outwards in an awkward way, and I'd have liked to remove it, and have some curves tapering to a point where I attach the elastic to go across the back of my knee.
As you can see, the real thing isn't much prettier than my awkward drawings.
So, at this point, I cut my pattern at the top and bottom of the inch wide strip across the middle, so I had three pieces, one rounded top piece, one pointed bottom piece and the inch wide strip for the middle. I then cut all these things out of pleather- MAKING SURE to add a small amount of seam allowance at the bottom of the top piece, the top of the bottom piece, and both sides of the strip. Then I stitched the pieces together for each knee guard so I just had one piece with seams that matched the lines I had drawn when I added the one inch strip to the pattern. Then topstich those seams down.
Next I traced the pleather piece onto some black fabric for a lining, the lining doesn't need the seams, so there was no reason to use the front pattern for the lining. Sew the top and bottom edges to the lining, right sides together, flip right side out, and topstitch the seams. Fold the ends under maybe a quarter of an inch and stitch it down to finish the ends. Now it's time to add the rivets.
I suppose if you're fancy you could do the rivets before the lining and have the prongs hidden by the lining, but that means making sure you leave enough fabric to sew them together after the rivets are placed, and sewing a careful narrow seam and all of that sounds terrible. So I didn't. But if you want to, feel free.
I placed 13 studs along the top edge, and 15 along the bottom. They're roughly an inch apart, but I didn't measure, I just tried to evenly space them by placing the one dead center and the ones on the ends, and then folding each section in half to find the center and just dividing in half repeatedly until I liked the spacing. Feel free to use more precise measurements if you're more meticulous than I am.
There are 21 studs across the middle strip and those are within an inch of each other, zig-zagging up and down. By which I mean I would lay down a ruler, and the first rivet would be placed inside the beginning line of the inch, and the second would be inside the ending line of the inch. Like this:
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| Image not to scale |
Once you have all the studs placed, we can move on to the decorations. This is another one of those places where I wish I'd done it a little differently, and I will cover that.
So I took the circle and claw pattern pieces I had made and traced them onto 2mm craft foam and cut them out.
I made sure to label all the pieces. The top pieces are slightly different shaped so it's important to keep track of which is which. it's not so important for the bottom, they're all the same.
I attempted to heat seal the foam to make painting easier, but these tiny scraps of 2mm foam just blew around under my heat gun. That was where I first realized this wasn't going to be easy. Next I wanted to spray them with a coat of Plastidip, but this proved to be exactly as difficult. I did the best I could, laying them out in a box and chasing them around the box with the spray can, trying not to spray too close. Plastidip got underneath some pieces, sticking them to the box when it dried and the foam just ripped when I tried to pull it off, forcing me to remake some of them. To remake them I sprayed a large piece of foam with Plastidip and then cut them out.
Also, why did I use yellow foam? I really don't know. I had perfectly good black foam sitting around unused. I had to take some black Rub N Buff around the edges of the replacement pieces to cover the cut yellow edges. So silly.
Once I'd finished fighting- I mean painting- the foam pieces, I glued them all in place using E6000, since it's flexible. I then gave them a coat of Antique Gold Rub N Buff, and did some black airbrushing for weathering. I added three roughly 2-3" strips of 1" wide elastic to the edges and that was pretty much it.
I just slide these up to my thighs, put the boots on, and slide the knee guards down into place.
So, a note: I regret using foam for the designs. I've worn them twice and after the first time the foam pieces started peeling off. The Plastidip I sprayed them with made the edges curl, and to foam did not seem to want to stay glued. You can see in the pictures that the pieces are resisting the pleather it's glued to and trying to curl away. I wished I had used pieces of pleather, but maybe of a different, thicker kind? One layer of my pleather would not have been thick enough, and I'd have my doubts about double layering it, but a thicker leather or pleather would have worked better I think, more flexible and less resistant to being glued down. Or at least I should have skipped the Plastidip.
Well, once we've gotten here you should have yourself a very convincing Warrior Princess outfit, complete with armor. You're ready to take on some bad guys! As long as you only plan to use your fists, of course.
What's a warrior without her weapons? We'll be covering that next.
Part Five: The Weapons
